Steinberg has announced a new symphonic VST instrument and library: HALion Symphonic Orchestra. A 27GB library, integrated easy-to-use player, RealAmbience adjustable recorded reverb and range of playability features combine to form a new orchestral composition and production tool.

Played by a leading European orchestra, the expansive 27GB HSO library encompasses a vast array of articulations for strings, woodwind, brass and percussion including crescendo, decrescendo, accents, half and whole tone thrills, bowing (where applicable), portamento, pizzicato, expressivo and many more. 1250 programs offer solo, ensemble and tutti sounds for almost every instrument, with innovatively programmed facilities like key-switches and crossfades providing easy use of complex sample groups.

An innovative feature first developed for HALion String Edition 2, RealAmbience adds the real reverb tails of the included instruments which were recorded live after the instrument stopped playing. The RealAmbience control dynamically and discretely blends in these additional samples as desired, recreating a genuine concert hall inside modern computer-based production environments.

HSO includes a range of performance optimization features from Steinberg's HALion 3 sampler, including the advanced disk streaming system and RAMSave technology, which allows unneeded samples to be unloaded from RAM, further saving precious system resources. To offer users a direct choice between top quality and player performance every one of the 15,000 unique samples is included in both 24-bit and 16-bit versions. Many of the HSO programs are also included as ECO versions, for even further optimized performance.

Supporting VST, DXi, AU as well as ReWire, HALion Symphonic Orchestra also offers a stand-alone mode capable of playing out to multiple outputs.

HALion Symphonic Orchestra will be available in Q2 2006 for €499.00*. Existing HALion String Edition customers can upgrade to the new HALion Symphonic Orchestra, while owners of any competing orchestral sample product can make use of Steinberg's trade-in offer.